Mona Hatoum

Mona Hatoum’s multimedia practice investigates themes of containment, displacement, conflict, and the notion of home. Working across installation, sculpture, video, photography, performance, and works on paper, Hatoum reimagines familiar domestic objects, transforming them into instruments of tension and unease. In Homebound (2000), for instance, she electrifies ordinary furniture to evoke both intimacy and danger. Her film Measures of Distance (1988) overlays photographs of her mother with voiceovers of letters sent from Beirut, weaving personal memory with political circumstance.Born in Beirut, Hatoum studied graphic design in Lebanon before being exiled during the Lebanese Civil War. She later continued her studies at the Byam Shaw School of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art in London. Over the past decades, she has exhibited internationally—in New York, Doha, Paris, Berlin, Istanbul, Beijing, and London—and has participated in major global exhibitions including the Venice Biennale, Documenta, the Biennale of Sydney, the Istanbul Biennial, and the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art. Her works, often commanding six-figure prices on the secondary market, continue to challenge perceptions of safety, identity, and belonging.